60 Seconds In And You're Lost
by jesuisnique
Summary: It's 15 minutes past 7 (on a rainy Thursday morning) when you first realise that you're in love with her and she's reading Tolstoy upside-down, so somehow you think that it's going to be all right.


It's 15 minutes past 7 when you first realise that you're love.

It's also a dull, mizzly Thursday morning - but it's still 15 minutes past 7 when you realise that you're in love, and then you start breathing for the first time (this is something you can never quite explain to her when she asks, but you always try your very best to answer any question that falls off the tip of her curious tongue and, despite your best efforts, every answer is different from the last.

Once you told her it was like being in the deepest depths of the ocean, floating along underwater currents in complete blackness. But the thing is, you don't realise where you are nor the total lack of living that you're doing. You don't realise that all your life has been an act of survival, dodging the sharp teeth of faceless monsters that want nothing more than to devour you whole.

You don't realise any of this until that safe current you've been letting yourself be dragged along by sudden stops, and you sink further down into an indescribable blackness that's full of the things that lurk behind your eyelids at 3 in the morning when you're lonely and sad and lost, when, as suddenly as someone sells their soul to a stranger for a smile, another current grips around your rips and then you're being thrown about left and right, all the while you're thinking that you're either going to die or you're gonna end up wishing you had.

Either way, you start living.

So when that beautifully destructive current destroys you, puts you back together again and leaves you, you find yourself floating in the middle of a blue ocean with a bunch of different fish, each on more brightly coloured than the one before, and you can't bring yourself to regret anything because you know now what it is like to live instead of merely surviving, and you wouldn't trade that for anything - well, anything but a few more moments of being flung around by a temperamental current.

She cried the first time you told her this. She also cried when you said it was like a star had been born within your chest, all burning hot and bright, just like she is.

She didn't appreciate it when you once told her that it's because you never really saw how ugly she was before then; the resulting slap stung but the bruising kiss you gave her made you forget the pain - made you forget everything but her).

You start breathing then and every breath you take after that first one you took when it was 15 minutes past 7 on a rainy Thursday morning always echo her name: Snow (inhale) White (exhale); though at the time you didn't know her true name, but it didn't matter because at 15 minutes past 7 you realised that you were in love with her and that it was raining outside so her hair was slightly damp and that the ends were curling ever so slightly (which made you fall in love with her all over again) and that the book she was reading was upside down and that when you opened your mouth to ask her why she was reading Tolstoy upside down all that came out was a breathy "Oh" (she's certain you said "Snow", in fact she argues with you whenever you tease her about her upside-down reading abilities, but you always let her win because the smug little smile that forms on her rosebud lips is both a delight to see and a delight to kiss off).

Her head snaps up then, green eyes finding yours without any difficulty; it's then that you realise you're in love with a woman who can stare into your battered old soul as easily as she can read classic novels the wrong way up and that it's still 15 minutes past 7.

You're convinced that the look you both shared on that rainy Thursday morning lasted forever and a day - an infinity (but you don't believe in infinities, you really really don't. You think that everything has its time and once it's your time you're going to go quietly into whatever goddamn thing there is to go into because you know that you'll only let yourself fade once she's gone, brunt out like some star in the sky. Whatever happens next you don't know, you don't like to think about it, but when she thinks about it you find yourself agreeing that forever wouldn't be so bad as long as she was by your side and dammit you believe in infinities now because she does and that's all the reasoning you've ever needed to believe in something); suddenly, the big hand of the clock behind you moves a fraction of an inch to the right, and just like that it's 16 minutes past 7 on a rainy Thursday and you're looking at her because you're in love with the way she exists and it only took you a minute to realise this.

You blink, slowly, as she stops looking at you and returns to reading topsy-turvy (you ache to ask her how she does it - how she can read when the words are facing the wrong way, but you hold your tongue, never once thinking that maybe she can't read like that, since she's her and you're you and that's all you've both ever have been).

You take the two warm cups of coffee with a polite "thank you very much" and a slightly cheeky grin in her direction before you leave at precisely 16 minutes past 7 in the morning.

It took you a very (long) little time to realise that you're in love with a girl that you aren't supposed to be in love with but it's also a Thursday and you never could get the hang of Thursdays anyways so why should you care? It's also raining, so you give Kathryn her coffee quickly before you jog off in the direction of the animal shelter. You realise that maybe you should've said "good morning" to her but you can't bring yourself to feel bad because if everything goes to plan you'll be able to say good morning to her after kissing her awake between white sheets.

(It doesn't, but you found each other in the end, so's there that).

* * *

_Disclaimer: Don't own the characters and stuff._

_ALSO, I will go down with this stupid ship, no matter how corny they are or how many times they say "I will always find you" because wow, they're gr9 together. _


End file.
